Author: trumplandiareport_zk3po8

Thinking Yet Again About What I’m Going To Do About Literary Agent Due Diligence When I Start To Query In About Year.

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Jesus Christ. A published author on Twitter said something alone the lines of — watch your back when it comes to what you put on your website. Given that I’m 100% extroverted and I generally just put on this blog whatever happens to be on my mind at any one moment…don’t quite know what to think about that advice.

I suppose I still have time. As things are going right now, I won’t be in a position to query until late next year — about a year from now. And a lot could be going on by that point, from the US electing Tyrant Trump to the presidency again to him NOT being elected and we having a civil car. Good times!

But I do have to think seriously about what a literary agent might think of my social media output over the years. I’m very torn about this situation. On on hand, I’m really don’t fucking care. So be it. Slings and arrows. But on the OTHER hand, the idea that I could write a really great pop novel only to have it not sell because I’m across as a drunk crank, well…at least gives me pause for thought if nothing else.

And, yet, for all the angst, I know in the end I am who I am and I’m not changing that, no matter what. Come what may. I’ve always been a freaky weirdo and, as such, I’ve always suffered what one might call the “kook tax.” I’m prepared to just go through the process of querying and wish for the best.

I have to say, though, it will be interesting to see literary agents looking through my webstats.

The General Has Begun: ‘Hysterical Doom Shit’ Edition

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The 2024 general election campaign has begun — at least in the mind of malignant ding-dong Donald Trump. You know this because of how Trump is banking to the center when it comes to the issue of abortion rights. Trump knows that he has an absolute grip on the nomination so he doesn’t have to pander to the pro-Life absolutists who otherwise have a stranglehold on the Republican nomination process.

This, if nothing else, should make people sit up and take notice that there is no stopping the Trump Train at the moment. Barring something I just can’t predict, Trump is going to win the 2024 election. And if you factor in Biden’s advanced age…oh boy…a repeat of the 1872 nightmare scenario is definitely something you have to ponder.

The fact that even ding-dong Trump has the wherewithal to lean into his lock on the nomination to campaign as if he’s trying to win re-election is rather alarming. We have to accept that there is absolutely nothing that can be done to stop Trump from being president again.

We have to start to prepare for America’s final transition into an autocracy of blood and soil. The entire post World War II liberal order is probably going to come crashing down. The US is going to leave NATO and pull out its tripwire troops stationed in South Korea. Ukraine will have to sue for peace and, that’s it. That’s all she wrote.

Meanwhile, on the domestic front, some pretty dark shit is going to start to happen. Trump will end birthright citizenship, which might be part of a broader attempt to redefine citizenship as narrowly as possible. And it’s at least within the realm of possibility that some of my “hysterical doom shit” may become reality as the existing ICE camp infrastructure is weaponize.

That’s probably our reality starting in early 2025. I can’t predict the future, of course, so it’s possible we’ll manage to punt our problems down the road via some sort of “third way.”

I find this very dubious, however. No matter what happens, 2024 is shaping up to be the most significant election in American history since 1860.

AI Is About To Transform Hollywood

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m old enough to remember the dawn of the Internet. And, but for how my brain is wired, I probably would be on a yacht today snorting cocaine off the asshole of a “yacht girl.”

I just can not, for the life of me, process how to code. So, 30 years ago, I could understand the implications of the looming Internet revolution, but there was squat I could do on a practical basis to benefit from it. And even when I did benefit from it, I found myself wanting to be a writer.

Go figure.

Anyway, the point is — all signs point towards AI totally and completely revolutionizing recorded media of any sort, be it TV, movies or even — gulp — novels. There is going to be some serious futureshock at some point in the next 18 months as we lurch into a future where there are two types of people involved in entertainment — plutocrat suits and software programmers.

There will be no other humans involved.

And I say this being well aware of the fact that the courts have recently decided that you can’t copyright AI-generated art. Given the billions of dollars on the line, the suits will figure out some way to work around this particular problem soon enough.

We need to adjust our expectations as to what Hollywood will look like in a few years. Our only hope at the moment, it seems, is after the novelty wears off, that people will begin to seek out “artisanal art” that they know was created by the hand of Man.

That’s just a sliver, but that’s all we got at this point.

‘Acceptance’

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The only way I’m going to finish this novel is to accept that I’m neither Stieg Larsson nor Gillian Flynn. I can aspire to write as well as they do, but I have my own style and my own limitations.

If I keep comparing myself to them, I’m never going to be satisfied with this novel. Remember, the old quip is, “No novel is ever finished, only abandoned.” So, I have to be prepared to finish (or abandon) this novel once I tell the story I want to tell.

I’m going over the second draft now and I’m really worried that there isn’t enough character development. I’m also worried that things are moving too fast in some places.

But, I think, the key thing is to just finish something, anything and then let the Beta Reader process take over. And I hope to pay an editor to stress test the story at some point, as well.

It’s tough, though. Things have gotten so much better with this story, that I want to keep improving the story until I can look at feel it compares favorably to professional, published authors that I respect.

And, yet, I also realize I’m not going to live forever.

Is Someone Actually Listening To My Hysterical Scenarios?

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Because I have absolute no life, I study my Webstats to such an extent it’s really rather shameful. Having said that, I will note I’ve noticed an uptick in people poking around this site with something of an agenda.

I really pulling this out of my butt because I have no idea what is really going on, but given some of the links that people out in the aether are interested in, I wonder if….maybe people are beginning to take my hysterical predictions for 2024 – 2025 seriously?

Who knows.

If they are, it’s very, very flattering.

Generally, no one listens to me. Ever. For any reason. And when they do, they get mad at me. So the idea that even a tiny number of “normal” people might actually be taking my foreboding about the next 18-odd months seriously is enough to make me sit up and take notice.

Anyway. I really hope we don’t have any sort of civil war. It would be much better if we just slip into autocracy and I find to find some way to avoid crossing our new autocrat, President Ron “Tiny D” DeSantis. I have a novel I’m working on and Freedom of Speech would be the last thing that he would strangle, giving me time to maybe get my novel published.

‘Wrong Tree’ — #lyrics to a #pop #rock Novelty Song

Wrong Tree
lyrics by @sheltgarner
please give credit if you produce or perform

walking down the street
see a lovely lady
next thing I know
she’s holding hands
with a gal
it was then I realized
that I was
barking up the
barking up the
barking up the wrong tree

what you do with your body
is cool with me
but what’s a boy to do
when he leers as a chyck
only to find out she’s
wading in the lady pond
the world these days
is so confusing
when you’re
barking up the
barking up the
barking up the
barking up the wrong tree

(bridge)
things once were simple
boys were boys
and girls were girls
now we fend for ourselves
not knowing west from west
the twain no longer meet
so you’re left to beat your meat

the world these days
is so confusing
when you’re
barking up the
barking up the
barking up the
barking up the wrong tree

Burn Hollywood, Burn: My Hot Take On The ‘Death Of Movies’ Discourse


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

There’s a lot of buzz of late about the “death of movies.” And, sadly, I fear some of it may be right. American culture is facing something of an existential crisis because the very idea of any sort of “mainstream” is now beginning to melt away. Identity politics is now so absolute that the legitimacy of any heteronormative story is up for debate in the overwrought conversations of Twitter.

I know I sound a little too Joe Rogan with the above, but it comes from a place of love — a love of movies as an art form.

You know it.

Here’s what I think is going to happen — movies are going to continue to drift into culture insignificance until one of a few things happen. If we stop being force fed movies about people running around in capes, then, maybe people might sit up and take notice. But this is unlikely to happen because you can make a shit ton of money with movies like that, so, lulz.

Another way to “fix Hollywood” would be to end “Woke Hollywood.” Instead of trying to make us more woke, tell us a good story. Don’t worry about identity politics — tell a good story. I want less Beanie Feldstein screeching about lesbian sex positions to a Plain Jane lead in Book Smart and more, I don’t know anything. I only keep ranting about how much I fucking hated Book Smart because I was shamed into seeing it by my center-Left echo chamber and the movie is the epitome of preaching to the audience about how being woke is so important.

But, as I always say whenever Book Smart is brought up — I wasn’t the audience. So if you’re a bi-curious high school girl in the suburbs of LA, you probably loved that movie.

Yet another way that movies may come roaring back is because of technology. It could be that once we fully transition to MX (VR and AR) or, hell, even some sort of Strange Days-like MindCap technology, that movies will, like vinyl, make a big comeback as young people grow disillusioned with immersive media.

The crux of the Hollywood’s current problem is a combination of industry dynamics and the need for it to suck its own cock when it comes to there being a “message” in movies. America is so tightly wound at the moment, that a huge segment of the potential viewing audience is turned off with Woke Hollywood, hence the popularity of message-free MCU movies.

I only get a little upset about this specific issue because I love movies. It’s not that hard to tell a great story in a movie. Hell, *I* want to tell a few of those great stories so bad that I recently bought Final Draft. So, lulz.

But are movies dead? Yes, in the short term. Long term, however, I believe they’ll turn out just fine. We just need a New Era of story telling that harkens back to the early 70s.

The Struggle With Word Count


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Generally, from what I’ve read, it seems a thriller’s “sweet spot” is about 100,000 words. I read a comment on Facebook from someone who said *40,000* was what the industry wanted and I call bullshit — that’s barely more than your typical novella. It’s comments like that that make one feel more stupid than before you read them.

But anyway, I’m shooting for something no longer than 140,000 for each book I’m working on. It was when I wrote the whole story out as one book and it came out to be 200 scenes or 200,000 words that I decided to split the story into two, ending the first book with a cliffhanger.

The reason word count is so touchy for me is I have the structure of these two novels mapped out after about three years and I hate the idea that after all this hard work, they’ll be rejected not because of my bad writing but because they’re just too fucking long.

But I’m prepared to self-publish if need be. I just know I’m working really hard to make these two novels as fast a read as possible, so hopefully a literary agent will notice that and forgive me for how long they are.

Only time will tell, I guess.

Incels, MAGA & Undead American Democracy


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The key issue to understand is American Democracy as we know it is dead. About half the population wants an autocracy pretty much because they can’t get laid. Technology has made it so blue collar men without a college education can no longer afford to get married and raise a family.

Everything else is just rationalization.

As such, at its core, the racism, misogyny and bigotry of MAGA is pretty much just men angry with blue balls. Or put another way, the idea of the “incel” is far more significant than one might think when it comes to how fucked up American politics is.

If you think you’re being forced to be celibate, then you’re probably going to be open to the ideas of the Proud Boys, or other forms of extremism. I guess what I’m suggesting is under the “resource” theory of history, a big chunk of men hate women and minorities because they lack the means to acquire the “resource” of sex.

The point of all of this is Trump has about half the population begging him to be an autocrat, to kill American democracy once and for all and, in a sense, he can’t get it up. To date, at least, he’s all talk. He gave Republicans hundreds of young hack MAGA judges and a huge plutocrat tax cut….but he can’t be bothered to take the final step of killing American democracy. This, even though a huge swath of the population wants him to do it. Like I said, in fact, people like Lou Dobbs and Gen. Mike Flynn are literally BEGGING him to do it.

And he can’t do it.

This is not to say America isn’t still in a very dangerous situation. Trump could still do something really, really crazy in a last ditch effort to stay in office, no matter what. He could very well snap in some way and destroy the country out of spite — and a fear of going to jail in New York State.

I have no idea what is in store for America at this point.

A lot depends on the economy and people like Tom Cotton. If Cotton manages to become president in 2025 or 2029, then that’s it, we’re an autocracy. The United States will be little more than Belarus.

And, yet, that’s kind of our best case scenario, given macro trends. The worst case scenario is there will be an organized effort to give Trump his Reichstag Fire NOW, so he can stay in power. It is easy to imagine a situation where there are a series of Oklahoma City bombings across the country in major Blue State cities between now and January 20th.

Or there’s a war with the DPRK or Iran.

You name it. What otherwise might happen gradually between now and 2029 might happen violently between now and January 20, 2021. You can dog whistle the need for violence for only so long before someone, somewhere is going to take you up on it.

And we haven’t even gotten to the part where Trump doxes Electors.

So if we manage to punt this particular autocratic problem down the road one election cycle because, in the end, Trump really is just an empty suit, no an autocrat, well, I don’t know if I’m supposed to laugh or cry.

Could Trump Replace AG Barr With Rudy?


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

First, when it comes to Trump at this point, nothing is off the table. So, yes, I could totally see Trump firing not only Wray at FBI and whatserface at CIA, but Barr at Justice.

And, really, there would be nothing we could do about it in real terms.

So, in these crucial two weeks before the Electors actually vote, interim AG could inflict a huge amount of damage on our form of government. The question is, is there really anything stopping Trump from doing such a thing other than it hasn’t occurred to him to do it yet?

Because of the gray area we’re currently in politically, Trump’s already near-king-like immunity to any political consequences is even more so now. So, really, just like Caligula named a horse Counsel, Trump could very well name Rudy interim AG any moment now.